Page 1017 - Week 04 - Thursday, 18 June 1992
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Petrol Prices
MR STEVENSON: My question was to have been addressed to the Chief Minister, but Mr Berry has been kind enough to indicate that he will answer in her stead. It concerns the high price of petrol that Canberrans have to pay. Could the Minister please indicate why petrol is usually 10c a litre higher in Canberra than in Sydney, allowing that the government franchise tax is 6.7c a litre in Sydney and 6.53c a litre in Canberra?
MR BERRY: Madam Speaker, I will let Mr Connolly take that question, as he has been handling these sorts of matters.
MR CONNOLLY: Unfortunately, we have not had the same swift response from the petrol industry as we have had from the tobacco industry. What Mr Stevenson has said is right - the taxation rate in Sydney is higher than here. Within the ACT there is a 1.8c a litre freight differential, which we are quite happy about. So one could understand it if the price of petrol in Canberra were 1.8c or even 2c a litre higher than the price in Sydney. Of course, as Mr Stevenson points out, it is not. It is something like 10c a litre higher. I can accept that a retailer can, in good conscience, pass on to the consumer a wholesale price increase. In the past four weeks we have seen a wholesale price increase of between 2c and 3c a litre - or 3.1c a litre, to be precise. We have seen a retail price increase of up to 5c a litre. That is just unacceptable. That is an additional 2c a litre being passed on to consumers.
Members will recall that late last year we tabled for comment a Bill which would give the Government power to move into the market and set a maximum price for petrol. The petroleum industry, at the level of the major oil companies nationally, has of course railed against that and tells us that price control is economically inefficient, that price control does not work, and that the consumer benefits from the free operation of market forces and the free market. The petrol majors had better prove that very damn quickly, because it is clear that what has happened in the ACT for years is that we have been seen as a nice little earner for the major oil companies. Prices operating for the retailers here have been quite different from the prices operating in Sydney, and the long-suffering Canberra consumer has been paying for the difference. If the oil companies do not move quickly, the Government will have to intervene. Mr Stevenson, in short, asks for a justification for 10c a litre higher petrol prices. The Government's view is that there is absolutely no justification.
Sporting Groups - Representations
MR DE DOMENICO: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister for Sport, Mr Berry. I refer the Minister to a report on the back page of the Canberra Times this morning that states that a person named Mr Peter Conway, who is allegedly the assistant secretary in the Office of Sport, Recreation and Racing, suggested that sport had made no official approach to his Minister in seven months. Can Mr Berry therefore confirm that in fact he has had no approaches from sporting groups in the last seven months?
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